Epistemological Similarities Between Science and Christianity

Robert Harris
Version Date: February 12, 2002
Original: June 8, 1991

In both science and Christianity, truth or knowledge comes from

1. Faith. Faith, or the appeal to authority, is considered by
most modern analysts to be weaker than other forms of proof, yet it is
(a) the source of most knowledge we have and (b) the source of the plausibility
structure by which we evaluate empirical data and judge whether to accept
or reject new claims to truth. One of the tests of truth is coherence (agreement
with other propositions held to be true). As Curtis McDougall notes in
his book Hoaxes, "People reject what does not square with previously
conceived ideas." Thus, truth in conflict with accepted ideas (whether
Phlogiston or logical empiricism) faces an enormous amount of opposition
from the inertia of belief.

The tendency of previously erected plausibility structures to guide
interpretation and judgment is so strong that conclusions often precede
reasoning rather than follow it. In their book The New Rhetoric
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca note:

It is a common . . . occurrence even for a magistrate who knows
the law to formulate his judgment in two steps: the conclusions are first
inspired by what conforms most closely with his sense of justice, the technical
motivation being added on later. . . . Strictly legal reasons are adduced
only for the purpose of justifying the decision to another audience. .
. . Fresh arguments, brought in after the decision, may consist of the
insertion of the conclusion into a technical framework. . . . (43)

The same is true with scientific theories, where theory influences observation
and world view influences theory. Technical, conscious, deliberate reasons
often follow conclusions generated from one's "sense of science"
or "sense of the world" or as Perelman says, an "incommunicable intuition"
(44).

Every book making a claim to be non-fiction is an appeal to faith or
authority, with an implied "Trust me" on the part of the author. Authors,
especially of text books, do not expect their assertions to be empirically
tested before being accepted. We have time and resources to make very few
direct tests of truth claims, even for simple empirical ones, such as that
the Eiffel Tower exists.

2. Values. As Perelman says, "Values enter at some stage or other
into every argument" (75), and a priori claims, such as the reality
of the external world, the existence of cause and effect, the belief that
there is a material explanation for all phenomena, that mind and brain
are one (monism) rather than two (dualism)--all these are values-based
and not subject to proof.

Values shape perceptions and the selection of data. The selection of
data may constitute an argument in itself. (Cf. Charles Darwin, "Let theory
guide your observations" [Letters]. (Compare the obvious implications
built in to some "news" articles, where selection of details points strongly
toward a particular conclusion.)

Note the saying, "What you see depends on where you stand."

3. Testing appearances by one's sense of reality. Facts do not
speak for themselves, but must be interpreted through what one believes
about reality. Perelman notes:

Normally, reality is perceived through appearances that are
taken as signs referring to it. When, however, appearances are incompatible--an
oar in water looks broken but feels straight to the touch--it must be admitted,
if one is to have a coherent picture of reality, that some appearances
are illusory and may lead to error regarding the real. Because the status
of appearance is equivocal, one is forced to distinguish between those
appearances that correspond with reality and those that are only illusory.
The distinction will depend on a conception of reality that can serve as
a criterion for judging appearances. Whatever is conformable to this conception
of the real will be given value; whatever is opposed to it will be denied
value. . . . Every ontology, or theory about the nature of being, makes
use of this philosophical process that gives value to certain aspects of
reality and denies it to others according to dissociations that it justifies
by developing a particular conception of reality. (Article, "The New Rhetoric"
804)

The correspondence test of truth is used by everyone. The standard to which
the proposition in question must correspond differs in different ontologies
or world views.

4. Inference. All those who come to know must do so through inferences--the
making of inductive leaps of unknown magnitude. William D. Romey, in "Science
as Fiction or Nonfiction? A Physical Scientist's View from a General Semantics
Perspective," Et Cetera, 37(3), Fall, 1980, says:

Virtually all science is based in significant ways on inference.
Even deductive science has inference at its base in that the principles
from which deduction ensues are themselves inferential to begin with. Inference,
by its very definition . . . involves the leap across a gap of unknown
dimensions to a conclusion. Some inferences may seem at first inevitable
and backed up by 'adequate' support. In fact, uncertainty remains an element
of even the 'solidest' influences. The structure of nuclear physics is
based on inferences developed from what could only be described as fights
of fantasy. Molecular biology, genetics, and evolution are based on the
same marshy ground. When, in geology books and technical articles, we find
details of what happened in a past long before the human species even existed
for periods in which only the most remote and fragmentary evidence exists,
we know we are in a land very close to the land of fiction. (205)

And Dario Fernandez-Morera, in an article, "Materialist Discourse in Academia
During the Age of Late Marxism," in Academic Questions 4(2), Spring,
1991, notes that academics are often guilty of presenting unprovable ideas
as facts, and "often blur the distinction between the factual and the hypothetical,
the real and the imaginary; and they tend to remain in the world of fiction
when they ought to have returned to the world of reality" (25).

5. Truths are postulated as universally true but not universally
believed. It is not necessary for everyone to agree on moral or religious
(or even aesthetic) truth any more than it is necessary for everyone to
agree on scientific truth before it is to be rationally acceptable. Many
scientific explanations are in dispute, including the Big Bang, continental
drift, global warming, the geological column, etc.

6. Objectivity. Science and Christianity are both objective,
in that they both posit external standards for the evaluation of new truth
claims. Both are open to the charge of subjectivity if their practitioners
use personal, internal standards for interpreting the truth claims. The
check against such subjectivity is the community (of scientists or Christians).
If the whole community is biased or has adopted communally subjective values,
its claims will no longer be objective.

Afterword on Science:

The original meaning of "science" was "knowledge," so that "a scientific
explanation" was as Arnold Lunn says in The Revolt Against Reason,
"an explanation which is in accord with all the known facts" (105). However,
"science" has been redefined to mean "knowledge of the material world as
explained by reference to the material world" thus, by definition, eliminating
knowledge of non-material entities and truths and prohibiting supernatural
explanations. Thus, if the truth is that God has created the natural world,
then the truth--that is, the real, actual explanation--is by definition
"unscientific." Such a definition of science is therefore question begging.